Unfamiliar Territory_Research

the soil with the help of fungi. 25 While much still remains unknown, one thing is clear – social life of plants is
lively, with or without us.
⚮
4.0 territories are territorialized assemblages
Territory can be conceptualized as an outcome of a complex, heterogeneous assemblage. Assemblages create
territories and work through intensive bringing together of elements from the milieu.
“We will call an assemblage every constellation of singularities and traits deducted from the flow - selected,
organized, stratified - in such a way as to converge (consistency) artificially and naturally; an assemblage, in
this sense, is a veritable invention.” 26
Assemblage, as understood by Deleuze & Guattari, is not a collection of predetermined components that are
then assembled to give rise to an already before envisioned structure. In other words, it is more than the sum
of its parts as something new must always emerge on the level of an assemblage. Assemblages are as
groupings of diverse components characterized by emergent properties - together they share the ability to
make something happen, something that each component could not produce on its own. This, though, can
only happen if components exercise their capacities and interact with one another. Despite the contingent
character of an assemblage, its composition is not accidental as it bears certain structure, possibility of selforganization.
The current overgrown area of Fort de Vaujours could be one such assemblage. There is
contingency to the elements present as the plant species are allocated somewhat randomly depending on the
soil type, micro climate, nutrients present in the ground, disturbances, plant competition, etc., and yet the
distribution is not completely accidental since only certain species of a certain succession stage of this precise
location have the capacity to grow at this time in this location. These species together form a group, express a
distinct character and particular qualities. They form an assemblage.
Every assemblage is also ‘functional’ - it is effective and affective and what is important are not so much the
components alone but more what these components together are capable of doing. The agency of an
assemblage, as discussed by Jane Bennett, puts forward an understanding of agency that “becomes distributed
across an ontologically heterogeneous field, rather than being a capacity localized in a human body or in a
collective produced (only) by human efforts.” 27 While this ‘heterogeneous field’, a human-nonhuman
assemblage does not presuppose a subject as the primary cause of an effect, it nevertheless retains
intentionality but acknowledges it as less decisive for the outcome. The main point of Bennett's understanding
is that human and nonhuman elements are always capable of affecting the dynamic of processes they find
themselves in, yet they in turn get affected and changed by them - nothing acts alone, but there are certainly
some actors that are in certain intervals more important than others. Accountability then moves from the
search after an individual human agent, responsible for an event or a problem, to become more concerned
25
Cossins, D. (2014). Plant Talk. The Scientist, [online] (1). Available at: http://www.thescientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38727/title/Plant-Talk/
[Accessed 2 Apr. 2016].
26
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus. trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, p. 406.
27
Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter. Durham: Duke University Press, p.23.
21